Apologies, but I couldn't find anywhere on the site which addresses this. As I understand it Windows supports DLNA out-of-the-box, using the Windows Media library it will allow me to access media via the PS3 so long as my PC is switched on.

What I'm trying to gain an understanding of then is what PS3 Media Server is for. Is the idea to bundle codecs and provide plugin support or is there more to it than that? At a basic level I guess the question is, what are the advantages of switching to this product?

Windows Media Player doesn't do any transcoding, independent of what system codecs you have for playback on your PC. If you use WMP, it requires that the media files that you play on the PS3 are PS3 compliant (it's a fairly restrictive list). PS3 Media Server (PMS), in addition to streaming compliant files, supports transcoding to cover non-compliant files and also allow subtitles (PS3 doesn't support soft-subtitles in most cases).So, if all your files are PS3 compliant and you do not require soft-subtitle support, then WMP will work for you. If not, you should give PMS a try.And this question is covered in the FAQ under some of the tutorials linked in the first post. But you are right, there is not a dedicated post for it. Maybe I'll change that...

Edit: Eh, the Help tab in the GUI covers it pretty well.

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PMS seems to work much better with large libraries of media. I have 90gb of music and 150gb of pictures and the Media Player 12 had to be rebooted and setting changed/reconfigured a lot to keep up. PMS loads them immediately and finds the libraries every time. Great software!

Windows version is rubbish, high def. video files are grainy and poor quality. I have tried divx media server, XBMC and Serviio some files wouldn't play on divx, the other 2 were even worse. Finally stumbled on PMS, recognised most files. Didn't play MP4 files. Whent into help tab on PMS and it had links for all software and codecs to transcode files my DLNA device (Panasonic BD75 bluray player) wouldn't handle. Easy to add folders to library. This is the best media server I have tried. Video quality is great I am really impressed with this. So will you be.